Friday, 26 February 2010

Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann appointed curators of the 12th International Istanbul Biennial

The 12th International Istanbul Biennial is set for 17 September-13 November 2011, under the curatorship of Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann.

Adriano Pedrosa, born in 1965 in Rio de Janeiro, is an independent curator, editor and writer based in São Paulo. He has published in Artforum (New York), Art Nexus (Bogota), Art+Text (Sydney), Tate etc (London), Exit (Madrid), and Frieze (London), among others. Pedrosa curated F[r]icciones (with Ivo Mesquita, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2000), was adjunct curator and editor of publications of the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo (1998), co-curator and co-editor of publications of the 27th Bienal de São Paulo (2006), curator of Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (2001-2003), curator of InSite_05, San Diego/Tijuana (2005), curator of 31st Panorama da Arte Brasileira (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 2009), and artistic director of the 2nd Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan (2009). He was a juror of the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts (Istanbul Biennial, 2001), of the Prêmio EDP Novos Artistas (Museu Serralves, Porto, 2003), and of the Hugo Boss Prize (Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2004). Pedrosa is on the editorial board of The Exhibitionist: A Journal for Exhibition Making and is the founding director of Programa Independente da Escola São Paulo.

Jens Hoffmann, born in 1974 in San José, Costa Rica, is a writer and curator of exhibitions based in San Francisco where he is the Director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. Hoffmann has worked for a number of art institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; KIASMA -- Museum for Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; The Hugh Lane Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; DIA Center for the Arts, New York, Kunstverein in Hamburg; Kunst-Werke, Berlin; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles; Museum Kunst-Palast, Düsseldorf as well as for exhibitions such as Documenta X (1997), the 1st Berlin Biennial (1998), and the 9th Lyon Biennial (2007). He was the Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (2003--2007) and co-curator of the 2nd Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan (2009). He is currently co-curating, with Harrell Fletcher, the 1st People's Biennial, taking place in five US museums in 2010. Hoffmann is senior lecturer at the Curatorial Practice Program of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, a guest professor at the Nova Academia di Bella Arti in Milan and an adjunct faculty member of the Curatorial Studies Program of Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the founding editor of The Exhibitionist: A Journal on Exhibition Making.

The curators of the 12th International Istanbul Biennial were appointed by the Advisory Board of the International Istanbul Biennial. The advisory board consists of the artistic director of dOCUMENTA (13) Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, contemporary artist Ayşe Erkmen, art consultant Melih Fereli, director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and chair of the Exhibitions and Museum Studies Program at San Francisco Art Institute Hou Hanru and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation and Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem Jack Persekian.

The conceptual framework of the 12th International Istanbul Biennial will be announced by a press conference to be held in autumn 2010 by the curators; Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann.http://www.iksv.org/bienal/english

Thursday, 25 February 2010

The Exhibitionist, a new journal made by curators, for curators, focusing solely on the practice of exhibition making. The objective is to create a wider platform for the discussion of curatorial concerns – encourage a diversification of curatorial models, and actively contribute to the formation of a theory of curating. It is published by Archive Books and will be distributed internationally, selling at major and specialty bookstores and newsstands.

The Exhibitionist will be published twice a year and will follow a strict editorial structure. In each issue, the Curators’ Favorites section will present three texts in which three curators write a personal essay about an exhibition, contemporary or historic, that has particularly impacted their thinking, followed by Back in the Day – an in-depth look at a historically important exhibition. In Assessments, the core of the journal, four curators will review a significant contemporary exhibition, each from his or her individual point of view. Typologies debates specific exhibition formats. Attitude features a text by a member of the editorial board reflecting on the current state of exhibition making. In Rear Mirror, two curators reflect upon exhibitions they have recently curated. And, finally, Endnote, a brief remark on a notable aspect of curatorial practice. Every fourth issue will include a conversation between some of the contributors about past issues; in this way the journal offers a forum for self-reflexivity.

Archive Books is an independent publishing house committed to the development of a range of activities dedicated to contemporary cultural production. Its work explores and conveys art publications as a method to bring art practices into the public discussion. Archive Books aims to produce and distribute printed materials, allowing to create and maintain a dialogue between cultural research and the social sphere.

Archive Kabinett is a platform from where to experiment with formats and concepts related to the field of publishing. Its intent is to investigate art practices in the context of a wider cultural and social environment. Archive Kabinett’s agenda is focused on the shifting cultural values and distribution possibilities, aiming also to encourage a critical discussion around the function of an exhibition. From this starting point, it translates, organizes, and circulates critically invested materials.

Novo Museo Tropical temporary space without art at the Invernadero in Madrid

Novo Museo Tropical (Museu without walls)

when museums and cultural centres outside of the hegemonic centres remain empty because they don't have budget for a programme or curators...when artists living in the semiperipheries produce specifically for the international market, art fairs and biennales, while ignoring their local public and contexts, or while abusing of their local public and context...when art produced elsewhere is bought legally (without looting as in the past) by international patrons and museums...shouldn't we rethink the kind of 'art' we do?shouldn't we rethink the kind of exhibitions we produce?shouldn't we rethink the kind of museums we aspire to have?

Novo Museo Tropicala museum without walls...an invitation to rethink the museum outside the centre...do we need new museums and mausoleums?can we think a different kind of collection?do we need art bought in galleries, biennales and art fairs?how to protect the collection from the climate without resorting to air condition?can we think a museum that exists beyond the conventions of the XX century contemporary art world and its structures?

how can cultural production and memory survive humanity after humans disappear from the earth?

EXHIBITIONS, PROJECTS AND TEXTS BY PLB

ABOUT ME

"At the end of the fifteenth of his 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind' Schiller states a paradox and makes a promise. He declares that ‘Man is only completely human when he plays’, and assures us that this paradox is capable ‘of bearing the whole edifice of the art of the beautiful and of the still more difficult art of living’. We could reformulate this thought as follows: there exists a specific sensory experience—the aesthetic—that holds the promise of both a new world of Art and a new life for individuals and the community. There are different ways of coming to terms with this statement and this promise. You can say that they virtually define the ‘aesthetic illusion’ as a device which merely serves to mask the reality that aesthetic judgement is structured by class domination. In my view that is not the most productive approach..." from
Jacques Rancier, 'The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes', New Left Review 14, April-March 2002

SHORT BIO

Pablo León de la Barra is an exhibition maker, independent curator and researcher. He was born in Mexico City in 1972. León de la Barra has a PhD in History and Theories from the Architectural Association, London. He has curated among other exhibitions ‘To Be Political it Has to Look Nice’ (2003) at apexart and Art in General in New York; ‘PR04 Biennale’ (2004, co-curator) in Puerto Rico; ‘George and Dragon at ICA’ (2005) at the ICA-London; ‘Glory Hole’ (2006) at the Architecture Foundation-London; ‘Sueño de Casa Propia’(2007-2008, in collaboration with Maria Ines Rodriguez) at Centre de Art Contemporaine-Geneve, Casa Encendida-Madrid, Casa del Lago-Mexico City, and Cordoba, Spain; ‘This Is Not America’ at Beta Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at the CCE in Guatemala (2010); ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, Cerith Wyn Evans at Casa Barragan, Mexico City (2010); ‘Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); 'Bananas is my Business: the Southamerican Way' at Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro (co-curated with Julieta Gonzalez, 2011); 'MicroclimaS' at Kunsthalle Zurich (2012); 'Esquemas para una Oda Tropical', Rio de Janeiro, 2012; 'Marta 'Che' Traba' at Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires (2012); Novo Museo Tropical at Teoretica, San Jose, Costa Rica (2012); Museu Labirinto / Museum of Unlimited Growth, ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro (2012); The Camino Real Arcades, Lima, Peru (2012). PLB has acted as advisor and/or art curator for the following art fairs: Pinta/London (2010-12), Maco/Mexico (2009-1012), Circa/Puerto Rico (2010), La Otra/Bogota (2009), ArteBA/ Buenos Aires (2012), ArtRio/Rio de Janeiro (2011-2013). León de la Barra has written amongst other publications for: Frog/Paris, PinUp/New York, Purple/Paris, Spike/Austria, Tar/Italy, Wallpaper/London, Celeste/Mexico, Tomo/Mexico, Rufino/Mexico, Ramona/Buenos Aires, Metropolis M/Amsterdam, Numero Cero/Puerto Rico. PLB has also written texts for many artists and exhibition catalogues, lectured internationally and participated in many international symposiums where relevant topics to arts, culture and society have been discussed. PLB was co-director of ‘24-7’ an artists-curatorial collective in London from 2002-2005 and artistic director of ‘Blow de la Barra’ in London from 2005-2008. From 2005 to 2012 he was curator of the White Cubicle Gallery in London, a community art space which he also founded. He is also founder of the Novo Museo Tropical, a museum yet to physically exist somewhere in the tropics and curated the First Bienal Tropical in San Juan Puerto Rico (2011). He is also the publisher of Pablo Internacional Editions and editor of his own blog the Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution. He lives and works between London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, San Juan, Bogota, Lima, Athens, Beirut...